Renewable Resources: Wild Rice

We have a lot of natural renewable resources here in the Northwoods—some you may think about, others you may not. In this episode of Wildlife Matters, the Masked Biologist takes a closer look at one important resource that might be easy to take for granted.

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When you think of an important renewable natural resource that is spread across the Northwoods, you might first think of timber; we have a lot of forested area. Maybe you think of the wildlife that occupies large blocks of forested habitat, like deer, bear, wolves, or a variety of songbirds or fur-bearing small mammals. If you are a forager, you think about the large blocks of public forests that contain an abundance of blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, and hazelnuts. Perhaps you think of lakes and rivers. We are known as the Headwaters area, with good reason—the wooded fens and bogs throughout this area are the origins of the Pike, Pine, Popple, Brule, Menominee, Wolf, Wisconsin, Peshtigo, and Oconto Rivers to name a few. There are over 1600 lakes in Oneida County alone, and North Central Wisconsin boasts the largest concentration of freshwater kettle lakes in the world.

When I first moved home to Wisconsin to work in natural resources, I knew about all those resources, to a degree. There was one resource that I honestly never thought about, and I needed to be educated about the cultural importance, historical significance, and overall value of wild rice. You may have seen the plant before, but paid it little notice. Our lakes and rivers are quite well suited for wild rice production, and there are many areas where rice is present or even fairly abundant.

Wild rice is an aquatic grass, so technically it is a cereal, not a true rice. An individual plant only lives for one year; it sprouts from a seed in spring, and goes through three stages of its life cycle before dying off in the fall. The first stage is a submergent plant, meaning it lives entirely underwater from the time it first sprouts until about mid-June, when it enters the “floating leaf” stage. This time is critical for the plant. It grows new leaves that float on the surface, so if the water rises during this time, the leaves could get submerged and drown the plant. Also, the floating leaves can lift the plant’s roots out of the bottom because of wind and wave action. Within a couple of weeks, stiff shoots break the water’s surface and extend above the water’s surface, and the plant becomes emergent. Each plant generates a number of seeds, and the seeds do not all have the same germination period. Some seeds will germinate after one winter; some will persist in the lakebed for two, three, even five years or more before sprouting.

Wild rice is known as Manoomin by the Anishinaabe (Ojibwe or Chippewa) people. Manoomin (which means the “good berry”) is woven into the fabric of Native American history, beliefs, culture, and way of life. Manoomin led the Anishinaabe to the Great Lakes, and was an important food source and trade item for centuries. When the tribes signed treaties with the United States government in the 1800s, they offered up the land, but retained the rights to hunt, fish, and gather in the areas named in those treaties. Manoomin harvest was one of the rights retained by this treaty. Today, a Wild Rice Committee brings together tribal Rice Chiefs, the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, and state and Federal natural resource professionals to cooperatively manage rice resources for protection, propagation, and harvest.

Wild rice is extremely valuable as a wildlife food resource as well. Muskrats love the plants, and there are a variety of birds that feed on the insects they attract or the seeds they produce. Waterfowl such as wood ducks, mallard, teal, black ducks, pintails, scaup, redheads, and ring-necked ducks feed on rice. Although there may be a number of lakeshore owners who consider these plants a nuisance and cut or pull the plants to open up the shallows along their banks, these rice beds benefit the ecosystem, and people as a part of it.

Striving to make new things familiar and familiar things new, this is the Masked Biologist bringing you Wildlife Matters from the heart of Wisconsin’s great Northwoods.

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